Alabama Set to Execute Nathaniel Woods Despite Claims of Innocence, Police Misconduct

Nathaniel Woods (pic­tured, left) did not shoot Alabama police offi­cers Charles Bennett, Carlos ​“Curly” Owen, and Harley Chisholm III (pic­tured left to right, below). But because of alleged police mis­con­duct, incom­pe­tent rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and Alabama law allow­ing death ver­dicts based on non-unan­i­mous jury votes, he faces exe­cu­tion on March 5, 2020 for their deaths.

Prosecutors acknowl­edge that Woods’ co-defen­dant, Kerry Spencer, shot the offi­cers in an inci­dent in a drug house on June 17, 2004. Spencer also admits to hav­ing shot the offi­cers, but says he did so in self-defense after they had beat­en Woods dur­ing a shake­down and point­ed a gun at him. Spencer also was sen­tenced to death — also after a non-unan­i­mous jury vote. However, he received bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al and on appeal and is still years from a possible execution. 

Woods’ racial­ly charged con­vic­tions and death sen­tences are taint­ed by claims of police cor­rup­tion, intim­i­da­tion of wit­ness­es, and inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Knowing he was not the shoot­er, pros­e­cu­tors offered Woods a plea deal for 20 – 25 years, but his tri­al lawyer advised him not to take it, mis­in­form­ing him that he could not be con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal mur­der as an accom­plice. After Woods, who is Black, turned down the offer, pros­e­cu­tors claimed at tri­al that he had been the mas­ter­mind of a plan to kill the three white offi­cers because he sup­pos­ed­ly hated police. 

Woods argues that he received inad­e­quate rep­re­sen­ta­tion at tri­al and dur­ing his appeals. Despite the obvi­ous con­flict of inter­est, he was appoint­ed a lawyer who, until the eve of tri­al, was also rep­re­sent­ing Spencer. The lawyer missed fil­ing dead­lines and pre­ma­ture­ly pre­sent­ed oth­er claims with­out suf­fi­cient evi­dence, there­by bar­ring their con­sid­er­a­tion in the future after sup­port­ing evi­dence had been devel­oped. Woods was then assigned new lawyers who failed to chal­lenge his con­vic­tion in state court.

In an inter­view with The Appeal, J.D. Lloyd, Woods’ third appeals lawyer, said “[Woods’] case has just been so mis­han­dled and it’s just a shame that we’re at the point of exe­cut­ing a man who was not the trig­ger­man, whose case has so many issues that no court has considered.”

Background on the case

Woods and Spencer shared a home with Tyran ​“Bubba” Cooper, who dealt drugs from the house. According to a 2012 affi­davit, Cooper says he was pay­ing off Officers Owen and Chisholm $300 – 400 per week in 2002 ​“to pro­tect my drug busi­ness and to make sure that no one else sold drugs in my area of Birmingham.” Cooper was charged with attempt­ed mur­der in April 2004, and he says the offi­cers then raised their price. He had trou­ble mak­ing the pay­ments, so they would come to the house look­ing for him and some­times got in argu­ments with Woods. 

On the day of the shoot­ings, accord­ing to tes­ti­mo­ny from Woods’ tri­al, police vis­it­ed the house three times. Spencer said Officer Owen came to the house alone between 6 and 8 a.m., then came back lat­er in the morn­ing look­ing for Cooper. According to Officer Michael Collins, who sur­vived the shoot­ing, they had an argu­ment with Woods, after which he, Owen, and Chisholm ran Woods’ name through a data­base of out­stand­ing war­rants. They found a mis­de­meanor arrest war­rant for Woods and, after an admin­is­tra­tive delay, returned to serve the war­rant, Collins said. 

No war­rant was recov­ered from the scene, and eye­wit­ness­es did not report see­ing any of the offi­cers hold­ing a piece of paper. Collins and Spencer gave dif­fer­ing accounts of the offi­cers’ third vis­it. According to Collins, Woods sur­ren­dered to police and was upright and not hand­cuffed when Spencer opened fire on the offi­cers. Spencer says he awoke to a com­mo­tion in the house and saw Woods hold­ing his face in pain after hav­ing been beat­en by the offi­cers, then saw one of the offi­cers point­ing a gun at him. He insists he act­ed in defense of him­self and Woods. ​“I didn’t mean to kill nobody, man,” he said on the wit­ness stand. ​“You know, this was a deci­sion I had to make to stay alive or be shot, and I did what I had to do.” He lat­er described the inci­dent as ​“the scari­est moment of my life.” 

Cooper did not tes­ti­fy at the tri­als of Woods and Spencer, lat­er say­ing police had threat­ened him into silence. Woods’ girl­friend tes­ti­fied against him, say­ing he had made com­ments about his hatred of police. But even before the tri­al, she recant­ed. ​“I made that up. I told y’all what you want­ed to hear,” she said at a pre­tri­al hear­ing. Woods’ appeal alleges that police threat­ened her with charges of parole vio­la­tions if she did not tes­ti­fy. At Woods’ tri­al, the judge refused to allow evi­dence of police mis­con­duct to be presented.

Speaking to The Appeal, Spencer said: ​“Nate ain’t done noth­ing. … [He] is actu­al­ly 100 per­cent inno­cent. All he did that day was get beat up and he ran.”